August 7, 2009

Geoengineering News

The "cloud ships" are favoured among a series of schemes aimed at altering the climate which have been weighed up by a leading think-tank.

The project, which is being worked on by rival US and UK scientists, would see 1,900 wind-powered ships ply the oceans sucking up seawater and spraying minuscule droplets of it out through tall funnels to create large white clouds.

So much for the “barbecue summer” forecast by our state meteorologists. Not that this is the first time they have been mistaken. Unless my memory is playing tricks, 2007 and 2008 were forecast to be warm and dry summers. In the event, they were nothing of the sort. The Met’s repeated predictions of of temperature rise have, so far, proved demonstrably false.

The chap responsible for the bish was on television just now explaining that his office had only ever predicted a 65 per cent likelihood of warm sunshine. Fair enough. But if his staff can’t accurately forecast the weather two months in advance, why should we let them speak with such sacerdotal authority about what the temperature will be a century from now?

Good grief. Three words: Signal. To. Noise. The more observations you take, the more clearly a long-term signal, i.e. climate, emerges from random noise, i.e weather.